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Jokonya a breath of fresh air after Jonathan Moyo

New Information Minister Tichaona Jokonya was a breath of fresh air after his “clever but shrill and vitriolic predecessor” Jonathan Moyo, United States embassy officials said.

They said they had already seen modestly positive shifts in government media policy since his appointment.

Opposition Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s castigation of Operation Restore Order, for example, was given airtime by the national broadcaster and an extended critique of government economic policies by the private sector, including commercial farmers, was also aired.

The officials concluded: “Jokonya is, however, unlikely to stand up to Mugabe or the party hierarchy on critical issues but, as a diplomat and elder statesman, he may be an effective conduit of information and we intend to take him up on his offer to engage more closely with his ministry and through it the country’s official media.”

Jokonya told United States ambassador Christopher Dell that after a long career with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was a diplomat, not a politician.

He spoke fondly of his four years in the United States as Zimbabwe’s permanent representative to the United Nations and said that he was proud to be a “free citizen” of Louisiana.

“He half-jokingly asked if this citizenship would spare him inclusion on our sanctions list,” Dell said.

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The Insider is a political and business bulletin about Zimbabwe, edited by Charles Rukuni. Founded in 1990, it was a printed 12-page subscription only newsletter until 2003 when Zimbabwe's hyper-inflation made it impossible to continue printing.